Leeland Eisenberg, Alleged Hillary Hostage Suspect, Victim of Priest Sexual Abuse, by Danny Shea, Huffington Post, DATA

Leeland Eisenberg, Alleged Hillary Hostage Suspect, Victim of Priest Sexual Abuse?

By Danny Shea
Huffington Post
November 30, 2007

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/30/leeland-eisenberg-allege_n_74902.html

Leeland Eisenberg, the alleged suspect in the hostage situation at Hillary Clinton's Rochester, New Hampshire campaign office today, may have been sexually abused by a priest in the Boston archdiocese when he was younger.

In September 2002, a Leeland Eli Eisenberg, formerly known as Ralph E. Woodward, Jr., residing in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, filed suit against Boston Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law. The suit alleged that around 1982-1983, Father Richard Buntel, a priest at St. Catherine's church in Westford, Massachusetts, would take Eisenberg to the rectory of the church, offer him alcoholic beverages, bring out pornographic material, and sexually molest him.

On at least one occasion, Eisenberg awoke after drunkenly passing out in Father Buntel's car "to find himself being raped by Father Buntel in the driveway of St. Catherine's rectory," the suit said. At the time, Eisenberg, 21, was "in a state of desperation" over his "homelessness, the loss of his mother, and the abuse he suffered at the hands of his violent, alcoholic father."

Cardinal Law resigned in December, 2002 over sexual abuse scandals in his archdiocese, just three months after Eisenberg filed the lawsuit.

Read the formal complaint here .